


Islands of the Upper Air

by motherofmercury



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Cross-Generation Relationship, Discoveries, F/F, Femslash, Getting Together, HP Next Gen Fest 2020, Inspired by Poetry, Minor Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter, New love, Past Luna Lovegood/Rolf Scamander, Poetic, Sacred Magic, Sapphic, ancient gods, h.d. inspired, islands of the upper air, luna knows what's up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherofmercury/pseuds/motherofmercury
Summary: Lily Luna has never liked her namesake, or her strange and sometimes absurd way of looking at the world.  But a weekend full of ancient rituals and mountain forests is an eye opener, in more ways than one.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Lily Luna Potter
Comments: 17
Kudos: 16
Collections: Next Gen Fest 2020





	Islands of the Upper Air

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to B for the wonderful betaing, and of course to the mods for this brilliant fest yet again! <3

Lily looked up at the crooked house on the edge of the wood, backed by mountains. The sun streamed across the roof in vivid showers of golden dapples. The discontent she harboured in her heart clouded the picturesque view. She hadn’t really wanted to stay with Luna over the weekend, but she was running out of options.

Lily had been living in America since she graduated from Hogwarts and she had come back to surprise her parents for Christmas. The only problem was she’d had to come home a few days early. She would have stayed with Al but he and Scorpius had just moved in together and were still being particularly vomit-inducing. Naturally, Lily didn’t want to be around that for longer than necessary. And James, of course, was off in some exotic place training for his new Puddlemere position.

So she was stuck with Luna. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Luna; it was just that the woman was most likely mental. Lily had never really minded _that_ much, but she didn’t want to be stuck a whole two days in a house where the plums spat juice, the plants watered the humans, and the trees talked during the night. 

But she would survive. It was only for the weekend, after all.

Lily took a deep breath and hiked her bag up over her shoulder again, making her way down the narrow, cobbled path to the crooked house at the edge of the wood.

____

Lily cursed as she crashed her head through the wind chimes in the doorway. It took a moment for her to regain the balance of her unwieldy bag and her rising temper, but she mastered herself just as the door opened to reveal a floral-clad Luna.

She welcomed Lily into her home with open arms and the wafting scent of honeysuckle that followed wherever she went.

When Lily worked up the courage to ask why Luna had bought this crooked house in the middle of nowhere, the older woman gently replied that she had no love for crowded towns and concrete roads. She’d always yearned for all mountains and streams and wild stretches of the mountainside. That’s why she and Rolf hadn’t worked out in the end. As much as he loved wild creatures and wild places, he was a city kid at heart, as were both their boys. 

Lily could understand this, deep down. She’d never had much love for crowds of people either, particularly since she’d had to contend with so many growing up; her father being the saviour of the Wizarding world and all. 

So Lily discovered that despite herself, she was quite content in this enigmatic house with this enigmatic woman who drifted honeysuckle and peach as she floated about her days.

____

Luna insisted they make dirigible plum jam that first afternoon. Lily was wary of the way the plums had reacted to her magic in the past, but Luna insisted they would just do it the Muggle way. She claimed it was better; it made the energy of the house cleaner. Lily wasn’t sure what she meant, but she didn’t want to be rude so she held her contradictions in.

Luna stood, hands dripping plum juice that glistened in the streaming light from the window. The whole scene was painted radiant in an enticing golden edged glow. Lily didn’t quite let the thought cross her mind that she wouldn’t mind being captured in this moment of eternity. This strange moment where meaning was suspended and limitless; insignificant; where the simplicity of homemade jam was purer than any deep philosophical understanding. 

Maybe the weekend wouldn’t be so bad if it was full of beautiful and unexplained moments like this. Small epiphanies, she supposed.

They eventually got the jam into jars and then Luna spent the evening teaching Lily how to embroider sprawling daisies and hyacinths, azaleas and asters and wild roses onto her denim shorts. They dedicated hours to creating sprays of apple blossom and swirls of dandelions until Lily eventually nodded off into dreams of wildflowers and delicate hands in front of the hearth.

____

The next day they had dirigible plum jam sandwiches for lunch, and Lily discovered that Luna’s laugh was like the wind chimes over all the doors (to keep the Nargles away). They decided to take a walk in the forest and she danced through the trees ahead of Lily like a dappled leaf suddenly caught in an updraught one moment, then suspended in a sunbeam the next. As the day wore on Lily found her breath catching at the way Luna’s hair turned molten gold with flecks of honeycomb when it caught the evening light through the trees.

They were climbing up to the circle of alders near the popular grove. Luna had wanted to show her some ancient magic left behind by a long-forgotten worshipper of the old gods. 

Lily shivered as the wind whispered around her, shaking the trees gently and making it seem they murmured to each other like adults above a child’s head. There was something in this forest that Lily had never experienced before. It felt sacred. And incredibly old. 

She ran a few paces to catch up to Luna, the impression lingering in the back of her mind that perhaps here, those old gods no longer slept. The trees shivered around them as they came to the edge of the alder circle, a shimmering tingling, shrouding the air. In the centre of the circle lay a cracked and moss-covered marble altar, high and secret among the lovely alders. Wild azaleas danced around the base of the altar, splashing their pink and orange fire off up the mountainside beyond. 

Lily watched as Luna threw herself down among the azaleas beyond the altar, spreading her limbs through the colourful fire, looking for all the world like a pale flower herself.

Luna gazed up through the canopy in a wild ecstasy of the unruly ordered chaos all around them. She motioned for Lily to join her and pointed out the way the trees all made room for each other, not letting their canopies touch, smiling softly all the while.

Lily sat delicately next to her namesake, careful not to trample too many of the flowers. She listened politely as Luna tangentially explained the history of the sacred site, circling back on herself as she told the narrative. She described the genii of the flowers around it and imagined the kinds of creatures that used to live in this wood. 

It really was fascinating stuff, but Lily was less focused on the words coming out of Luna’s mouth, and more on the soft, pink lips of that mouth as they moved.

Lily quickly snapped her eyes up to meet Luna’s when she realised the older woman had stopped talking.

Luna had her head cocked to one side, a tiny smile playing across her lips. Her airy voice floated through the woods like an ancient spell for peace and knowledge.

“Life has a habit of putting one exactly where they need to be, exactly when they need to be there.”

Then she leaned forward and kissed Lily with gentle lips, warm with sunlight and sweet with berry juice. The tang of dirigible plum jam lingered when she pulled away. Lily wrapped a hand into the fabric of Luna’s dress and gently tugged her back in for another kiss; this one longer and more sure. Soon enough they were a jumble of sprawled sunbeams, wild limbs and tangled azaleas. As darkness descended, Lily knew this hallowed ground had always been meant for something more.

It was its own secluded island on the mountainside, reaching through the trees with fresh upper air. The aspens pooled below them and the firs surged against their shore as they swam in their fiery ocean of flowers and trod the mountain paths as air.

____

After all her painstaking avoidance of visiting Luna, finally she found solace there, beyond the edge of the world. She ran the mountains like a nymph and danced in the wind like a dryad. She was here in these islands of the upper air. All mountains, and the towering mountain trees.

Lily finally realised why Luna was out here on the edge of the world; poised on the boundary between humanity and the gods; alive in the moonlight but still basking in the sun. She was Artemis incarnate, she was the goddess of the moon, she was the healer of the forest, and the guardian of adventure. She was a goddess of boundaries. Luna was as much a spirit of the forest - some kind of imperceptible woodland nymph - as she was human. _Artemis Akraios_. Artemis of the peak.

Lily reached out to the elusive woman and took her hand, letting their fingers slip together like the wind twining between the trees rooted firm in the mountainside.

**Author's Note:**

> Much of the energy of this fic was inspired by H.D.’s poem 'All Mountains' which can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=16970  
> ===  
> This work is part of HP Next Gen Fest 2020. The creator will be revealed at the end of November.


End file.
